


In Shades Of Gold

by sciencefictioness



Series: Red Heat [2]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Blood, Gore, Hospitalization, M/M, Mating, Mating Bond, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-16 04:39:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7252411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sciencefictioness/pseuds/sciencefictioness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Armin is not the kind of Omega that is going to cook an Alpha dinner, or clean their house, or wash their clothes.  That's what Alphas are for, after all.  To make his life easier, in any way possible.  He definitely doesn't want to be tied down to just one of them.  Then Erwin Smith shows up, tall and handsome and full of confidence.  </p>
<p>Armin has some things to teach him.  But not before he's drawn into a dangerous game that Erwin is playing with the lives of his friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Shades Of Gold

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is absolutely not meant to be a standalone story. If you haven't read 'Red Heat', you will not understand anything that's going on. The first chapter starts after [Chapter 27](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3948190/chapters/11979449) of RH, and I highly recommend you give that chapter a quick re-read before diving into this. There were some things I wanted to cover in Red Heat's story line, but they did not fit into the narrative well, and they were very Erwin/Armin centric, which I know is not everyone's thing. So I filled it in here. This chapter is happening pretty much currently in the RH timeline. Chapter 2 will jump back to before RH began, and start telling their stories from there. This is not going to be an incredibly long fic, but I wanted to write some winmin in this verse, and I didn't want to shoehorn it into the main story. Hopefully you enjoy.

The first thing that he noticed was not a sound, or a feeling, but a scent.  Just as the traces of a fire burning outside might creep under doorways and through gaps in windowsills, a different sort of smell coiled into Armin’s nose.  Front the front of his house, so strong he dropped the dish he was washing, and barely noticed it shattering in the basin of his sink.

 

_ Aggression. _  Violence.  

 

Not the kind of aggression he was used scenting at the dojo when he visited his friends, passive and muted and ultimately harmless.  This was fierce, and malicious, and ordinarily it would have sent Armin cowering instinctively into the dark corners of his room.

 

But Eren was outside with his mate, and Armin could not stand by and do nothing.  He had to know what was happening, even if the Omega inside him was telling him to flee.  His feet carried him to the door, hands trembling as he pulled the blinds down to look outside, and then Armin’s heart fluttered wild in his chest.  Something deeper than terror settled in him, in his chest and throat and mouth.  The feeling transcended fright to land in the realm of impossibility, eerie and unsettling and turning Armin’s guts cold.  Like watching the sun rise in the west, or the ocean go still and silent without the ebb and flow of the tides.

 

Eren was on the ground, either unconscious or rapidly approaching it, and even through the door Armin could smell blood.  Armin had watched Eren fight, over and over again, and win without fail.  He’d seen Eren dispatch multiple opponents without breaking a sweat, seen the strain of him holding back his blows so he wouldn’t hurt the Alphas he faced on the mats.  

 

Armin had listened to Jean recount the story of what had happened in Trost, the Alpha’s voice shaking, something lost and forlorn in his eyes.  He told Armin about following a trail of blood streaked floors and severed limbs and broken bodies to find Eren totally unscathed.  Painted crimson with gore, eyes glowing red, but without a single wound other than his ragged knuckles, torn apart on Alphan bones and teeth.  Eren had killed dozens of people and come out whole, nothing to show for all the violence he’d wrought on them.

 

Now Eren was laying down in street, eyes strobing bizarrely as he tried to keep them open, flashing gold and red and gold again.  Armin forced his gaze over to Levi, who stood protectively in front of Eren, covered in splashes of red with blood dripping from his mouth.

 

There was someone crumpled on the pavement a few feet away, unmoving, and another figure standing nearby.  Armin had his hand around the grip of the baseball bat he kept by the door before he even realized he’d reached for it.  Afraid or not, Armin was still going to go out there and help keep Eren safe.

 

It’s what he would have done for Armin.  Had done so, many times.  Eren had stood up to countless Alphas on Armin’s behalf when they got out of line.   He’d gotten up in the middle of the night repeatedly to pick Armin up from shady bars, taking the drunk Omega home and tucking him in.  Eren scent marked clothes for him to wear when he had to go out alone late at night, and brought him take-out when he was sick.

 

Eren was _ there, _ always, when Armin needed him.  For anything, without question.  He didn’t want to mate him, or use him, or take advantage.  

 

Eren just loved him, as he was, and wanted nothing in return.  

 

So the bat felt right in his hand, and he was already turning the knob to open the door, when he hesitated.  No matter how determined he was to help, he honestly didn’t see this playing out in his favor, all things considered.  Armin pulled out his phone, ready to call the cops, but if these people took Eren out in an instant what good would a bunch of city police really do?  He was dialing on autopilot, fingers tapping away, calling the only person he could think of that would be of any help. 

 

Erwin answered the phone on the third ring, voice still sleep rough, but Armin could tell he was fully awake.

 

“Armin?”

 

“Erwin.  Someone’s outside my house, I don’t know how many.  Eren’s down, and Levi’s covered in blood.  You need to get your people here right now.”  He rattled off the address, and there was a pause, a sharp inhale, and then-

 

“Armin, you stay inside.  I’ll get a team over there, I’ll get the police, too, but don’t go out-”

 

_ Click. _

 

Armin tossed his phone down and ran out the door, both palms wrapped tightly around the handle of his bat.  It was a half dozen steps or so before the scene really sank in.  Levi was down now, too, Eren holding him close as a tall Beta crouched over them both.  If Armin had been unsettled before, it was much worse now.  Someone who could take out Eren and Levi in a matter of minutes wasn’t an enemy Armin was really equipped to face alone. 

 

Still he ran faster, bare feet slapping against the gravel, trying to reign in the fright in his scent.  The Beta stood up as soon as he noticed Armin, eying him curiously but without much concern.  The man didn’t seem particularly threatening.  Certainly not powerful enough to handle Eren and Levi, tall yes but not physically intimidating.  The moment Armin was in range he swung his bat at the Beta’s face, hard enough that the metal sang through the air.  The Beta dodged, taking a few paces back, and Armin stepped deliberately in front of Eren and Levi.  He cocked the bat back again, ready to let it fly if the Beta got closer, fingers twitching on the grip.  

 

“OSC is on the way.  The cops, too.  I suggest you fuck off before they get here.”  

 

Mostly Armin just wanted this guy away from his fallen friends, especially once he noticed the gun in his hand.  He wanted to check on Eren and Levi, to see if they were still breathing, but he couldn’t take his eyes of the Beta across from him.

 

The Beta who smiled at him strangely, and tossed what looked like a syringe into the grass before pulling a cartridge of some sort out of his pocket and loading it into his gun.  _  A tranquilizer gun.   _ It made sense.  It also made Armin less afraid, even if it was logically no less dangerous in the long run.  Anyone could fire a tranquilizer round and knock out an Alpha, even one as powerful as Eren.  This wasn’t some monster of a Beta he was up against.

 

Just a guy with a tranq gun, and Armin widened his stance and sured up his grip.

 

“I’ll bash your fucking head in, I swear to God.”  

 

He might also be able to knock a tranquilizer cartridge out of the air, if he swung fast enough and aimed just right.  They fired more slowly than bullets, after all.  Armin kept his eyes on the Beta’s hands, even as he began speaking.

 

“I’m sure you would.  You’re Eren’s friend, right?  Armin?”

 

Armin tried not to let the shock show on his face, tried to think through his surprise, tried to keep his hands steady.  It wasn’t all that hard to find out who someone was these days.  Google would probably tell anyone who wanted to know exactly who Armin was.

 

But why would this Beta want to know?

 

“I wanted to talk to you.  You were there in the hospital when he came back from Trost.  There when he was dying, right at his bedside.  I wanted to thank you for watching out for my son.”

 

_ My son. _

 

Armin’s hands dropped, bat now pointed uselessly at the ground, mouth gaping open.   _ My son.   _ The words rang loud in Armin’s head again, and for a moment he couldn’t breathe, let alone think clearly.

 

_ Thunk. _

 

There was a sharp sting in his chest, and Armin looked down to see a needle buried in him.  Seconds later and he was itchy, and it was hard to breathe.  Even as blackness started to swallow him he was thinking of epinephrine and how far away his pen was.

 

And how he was allergic to so many things, and it felt just like this, throat closing and tongue swelling and body falling apart for no reason at all.  Fighting itself uselessly.  

 

Trying to save him from something that wasn’t a threat.

 

Killing him, maybe, depending on how long it took an ambulance to show up.  He fell to the asphalt, felt it scrape his palms open as he tried and failed to catch himself.  Felt his breaths start to come in erratic pants.

 

Felt long fingers threading through his hair, petting him affectionately.  Heard a voice whisper low, soothing and fond.

 

Whether the nausea was from the tranquilizer his body was rejecting, or the idea of Eren’s wretch of a father petting him like a dog, Armin couldn’t be sure.

 

“He’ll be back.  Eren will be fine, I promise you.”

 

Armin believed that, and not because this Beta told him so, but because Eren was indestructible.  Made of fire and stone and relentlessness.  Bones of steel and teeth like knives and hands that would tear down anything in his way.  Eren would be fine, it was true.

 

_ But will I? _

 

It was the last thing Armin thought, and then he couldn’t anymore, because the world fell down around him in shades of black.

  
  


………………………….

 

The steady beep of machinery was grating, digging its way under his skin, making his jaw tense and his teeth grind.  The hospital room was freezing, the scent of antiseptic overpowering in his nose, the fluorescent lights glaring and miserable.  He wasn’t sure he could bear another moment of it, but even with exhaustion living in his veins and sleep pulling at his mind, Erwin made no move to leave.  

 

All of this was his fault.

 

Not just Armin laying motionless in a hospital bed, drawn so far into anaphylaxis that he’d gone into a coma.  Erwin still saw it every time he closed his eyes, the Omega unconscious in the street.  Face swollen, skin broken out in hives, breath wheezing in out of lungs that were barely functioning.  

 

He didn’t close his eyes much.  There was more than just this Omega lurking there in the darkness behind his lids.  There was Levi, not as he was, but as he’d been the first time Erwin saw him in the pits.

 

Covered in blood, teeth pink, smiling and maniacal.

 

Eren looking the same, eyes red and feral, standing atop a pile of dead Alphas.

 

Erwin had delivered them right into the hands of their enemies.  He’d laid his trap, trying to lead his prey in the right direction so he could slip a noose around their necks.

 

Hung Levi and Eren instead, Armin getting caught up in Erwin’s ropes, all three of them taken down in one fell swoop.

 

Even if he saved Levi and Eren, even if they brought down the men who’d taken them, even if Armin woke up from his coma undamaged…

 

The blood on Erwin’s hands would never wash clean.  So he listened to the incessant beeping of the machinery by Armin’s bed, and let the lights burn his eyes.  Breathed in the acidic bite of disinfectant, and fought the sleep that wanted to claim him.  Reveled in the ache in his shoulders, the soreness in his neck, the throbbing in his head.  

 

He deserved worse.  No one even knew the things he’d done, the danger he’d put his friend in just for a chance to achieve his goal.

 

When his phone rang it was loud in the stillness of the room, and he pulled it out of his pocket with furrowed brows.  It was the middle of the night.  No one should be calling him, unless they’d gotten a lead on Levi and Eren’s whereabouts, or some other information about the case.  Hope furled through him, dangerous and potent.  His screen displayed an unknown number, and Erwin answered it with a frown.

 

“Smith.”

 

“Hello, Mr. Smith.  I’m going to text you an address.  There’s a bit of a mess you need to clean up.  I’d hurry if I were you.”

 

The line went dead, followed immediately by the buzzing of two incoming messages.  One of them was a text, an address and some basic directions.  Somewhere northeast of Stohess, down twisting rural roads that ran through untamed woods.  The second message was a video, black and white with a little time stamp in the corner.

 

Taken less than an hour ago, and when Erwin pushed play he stopped breathing altogether.

 

It was might have been in black and white, but Erwin didn’t need color to know the Alpha he was watching had bright red eyes.


End file.
